I heard the first and second parts on the radio (had to abandon the third in order to watch the gripping Wallander drama - penultimate Series One episode - on TV). Calleja's fluttery vibrato always bothers me, but it disappeared when he wasn't trying to sing softly.

At least they performed the Acts in the right order - I saw the old John Schlesinger Covent Garden production earlier in the year, and it really doesn't make sense to do Giulietta before Antonia.

I'm with you, Chris -- Kathleen Kim stole the show, or at least the part of it that featured her. She was funny and cute without working at it, and she handled the coloratura passages with such authority! Wonderful. Andrew, did you hear anything "fluttery" from Calleja in the part you listened to? I don't remember noticing anything; I thought he sounded grand all the way through.

The reason that the Giulietta act ought to come after Antonia is that the music from the Hoffmann/Giulietta duet reappears in the Epilogue, as if Giulietta is still in Hoffmann's head. I'm fairly certain that Offenbach wanted the acts in that order; the reason that Antonia is often performed last of the three is because the Antonia is usually a bigger star and has more to sing than the Giulietta (if the roles aren't performed by the same singer). Plus the end of the Antonia act is much more dramatic.

Calleja - yes, I heard lots of fluttery vibrato ("bleating", some might call it) on Saturday. The opera seemed very closely miked on the radio (I could hear Levine turning the pages of the score at some points), but, even so, I had to turn the volume up quite a bit to get it to the level of sound that I normally get from BBC opera broadcasts.

I wish I knew Hoffmann better; this is only the third production I've seen. I know there's always a lot of tweaking and cutting and re-arranging, but I was surprised at how small Giulietta's role was -- and how large Nicklausse's role had become! Co-star status. Is it possible Giulietta's part was cut down to make room for an expansion of Nicklausse's role? Can that be done? Enlarging of the Nicklausse role would have been to take advantage of Garanca's considerable talents; but Kate Lindsey, her replacement, couldn't match all the big voices around her. She seemed to grow stronger after the first act, but there was a hint she had some help. In the "Barcarolle" her voice all but drowned out Ekaterina Gubanova's, which would take some doing. It sounded to me as if the volume had been boosted in Lindsey's microphone alone. (Can they do that?)

I didn't care for the set for the tavern scenes -- too drab. I will be sooooo glad when the Met gets over its love affair with black/brown/gray sets and costumes.

Aside from those two things, I loved everything else about this production. I liked Calleja's warm, open tenor, and I too flipped over Kim's Olympia. Lots of spontaneous applause in my movie theater, with no hesitation in any of it. Sometimes you see something you like so much, you just have to pound your hands together.